Posted on 06/13/2004 11:39:42 PM PDT by Swordmaker
How about just making an email client that won't automatically open attachments or run scripts that will do the dirty work? After several years and countless worms, Microsoft is finally getting the message, but won't admit the damage it has done.
I've never had this problem because I don't use Outlook at home even though my mail server filters nothing but spam. At work where it's Outlook/Exchange they have attachments so locked down that it's hard to send files around that are necessary to do our work.
There is no way Windows usability can be classified as 10. Most aspects of the GUI and coding guidelines are just horrible. The basic UI has been around since 95, and Windows UI designers still can't understand the concept of infinite height and meaningful dialogs!
This is something the article glossed over, that kind of bugged me. It doesn't make the Mac any less secure or anything, that he believes it to be one thing, when reality is that it is another.
If he wants to believe it's some kind of good neighbor-type policy, I guess whatever floats your boat.
I strongly suspected windows dialog boxes are the Microsoft analogue to Disney's penchant for embedding phallic symbols in the product.
How is he "glossing over" something that's completely true? It's not a matter of his "belief."
BTTT
I think folks are comparing the latest version of the Mac OS with Windows NT, which dates back to 1994.
I just spent two days reaming out an NT server that was infected with a dozen different exploits. Interestingly, it still ran, and after disinfecting, it runs cleanly. It was installed in 1999 and had no virus scanner or firewall, and neither did any of the twenty workstations. It's pretty hard to blame Windows for the neglect of its operators.
Bill is correct in stating that nothing is guaranteed - MS has to 'recapture' new/existing customers on every release. I've been a PC user for over 20 years, but I can definitely foresee a future where alternatives could begin to make headway.
I'm a reasonably seasoned user and try to keep my system clean. On just a personal level, the amount of time I have to deal with *crapware* maintenance (scanning, etc) is a hassle. One can only imagine what major corps have to endure.
As std apps like word proc, spreadsheets, etc become commodities, the differentiating feature behind major IT purchases could be simplicity. Contrary to historical experience, a clean sheet system purpose built for the Net and with limited prior generational support could make inroads, especially since most archival info seems to be Net based (ie html) these days.
I should have phrased it better. What he is talking about (good neighbors, no tolerance for those types of programs/malware, etc.) are pretty much moot points. OS X is secure because of it's Unix underpinnings, not because we have less tolerance for "crapware" than Windows users ("crapware is a very good term for it).
People who are writing malware don't particularly care what others think, or how quickly word would spread. They are going to take the easy route and go after Windows because it's much more vulnerable right out of the box.
The neighborhood analogy is partly true: you see it in Mac user's esthetic demands as well. Butt-ugly and confusing software is routinely accepted in WIndows, but Mac users demand more. (Even MS acknowledges this in their Office product, which is far nicer on the Mac.)
At the same time, MS has simply never understood the Internet. They started as a standalone desktop system and because they filter every single decision through the "how do we maintain and extend our current product's monopoly" filter, they've never been able to catch up.
MacOS X is based on UNIX, which was multi-user from the beginning and was the platform on which the Internet was developed. You can't underestimate that heritage.
Here's a few reasons why this is not yet common:
It costs more money; for many, if not most, ISP, email is not their primary business, providing access is. Managing an email server(s) can be quite troublesome and costly, increasing that cost makes it harder to provide lower cost access.
A universal policy (stripping ALL executable attachments) is much easier in a corporate environment (where they also manage their own server). Here it would be part of company policy - "such files should be handled thusly..." It's desired by the "user" (company) in all cases. If a public ISP applied this, they could likely royally screw up some of its customer's major use for email.
Lastly, zipped files can also spread viruses, so even this wouldn't be a perfect system.
Now, virus/spam scanning on the email gateway, is a much more viable option. There are many ISPs who offer this. It adds expense too.
The worst ISPs I've seen are cable companies. Their spam filtering often consists of list blocking - an ineffective and counterproductive method. And their virus blocking - in my experience - is non-existent.
I've been annoyed by pop-ups using I.E. or Netscape on a Mac, or I.E. or a Compuserve browser on a PC. This is true with older and newer browsers, any Windows version, or any Mac OS 9.xx or below. I have no idea how to stop them. I believe (but I'm not sure) that Compuserve is a Mozilla based browser.
It was a Mac problem, caused by software. When I put the disk in the drive, the Mac read it as someone else's disk, but then said there was a disk error because that person's files were not there. I had to get a computer geek to recover my files. The disk itself was not physically damaged. Even when that Zip drive died, it did not physically destroy any disks. My problem would NEVER have happened on a PC, since the way a PC reacts when you change disks is completely different than a Mac.
I've never seen it, except in the case of my son's machines. He's always opening them and putting shareware on them--it's no wonder he has trouble with them!
-- Firefox will automatically block pop-ups, and with extensions (which you can DL for free), you can customize your browsing experience to work the way you think. For instance, I block all AOL images from my browser, so I don't have to look at that crapware.
Maybe there are so few Macs out there that creating inimical code is just not cost effective...
Been using macs and zips since they were invented - never heard of this. I've taken a PC zip, copied files off a PC and read them on a Mac. I think something else must be going on here, perhaps a corrupted copy, file or disk, most likely.
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